mend it! In a better time
there will be other "professions" than those three extremely cramp,
confused and indeed almost obsolete ones: professions, if possible,
that are true, and do _not_ require you at the threshold to constitute
yourself an impostor. Human association,--which will mean discipline,
vigorous wise subordination and co-ordination,--is so unspeakably
important. Professions, "regimented human pursuits," how many of
honorable and manful might be possible for men; and which should _not_,
in their results to society, need to stumble along, in such an unwieldy
futile manner, with legs swollen into such enormous elephantiasis and no
go at all in them! Men will one day think of the force they squander in
every generation, and the fatal damage they encounter, by this neglect.

The career likeliest for Sterling, in his and the world's circumstances,
would have been what is called public life: some secretarial, diplomatic
or other official training, to issue if possible in Parliament as the
true field for him. And here, beyond question, had the gross material
conditions been allowed, his spiritual capabilities were first-rate.
In any arena where eloquence and argument was the point, this man
was calculated to have borne the bell from all competitors. In lucid
ingenious talk and logic, in all manner of brilliant utterance and
tongue-fence, I have hardly known his fellow. So ready lay his store of
knowledge round him, so perfect was his ready utterance of the same,--in
coruscating wit, in jocund drollery, in compact articulated clearness
or high poignant emphasis, as the case required,--he was a match for any
man in argument before a crowd of men. One of the most supple-wristed,
dexterous, graceful and successful fencers in that kind. A man, as Mr.
Hare has said, "able to argue with four or five at once;" could do the
parrying all round, in a succession swift as light, and plant his hits
wherever a chance offered. In Parliament, such a soul put into a body of
the due toughness might have carried it far. If ours is to be called, as
I hear some call it, the Talking Era, Sterling of all men had the talent
to excel in it.

Probably it was with some vague view towards chances in this direction
that Sterling's first engagement was entered upon; a brief connection as
Secretary to some Club or Association into which certain public men, of
the reforming sort, Mr. Crawford (the Oriental Diplomatist and Writer),
Mr. Kirkma